zzzzzzTHE central executive committee of the Students’ Federation of India has, in a press statement issued on July 6, condemned the incidents of brutal police lathicharge against the students who were protesting on different issues related to education in Jodhpur of Rajasthan and in various parts of Kerala. The statement underlined that July 6 was the third day of the ongoing hunger strike in Rajasthan demanding proper reimbursement of scholarship, linking scholarship to inflation and better infrastructure in the hostels.

AN article in the previous issue of People’s Democracy had highlighted the agenda of “reforms” being systematically imposed on public funded higher education (‘Warning bells for India's Public Higher Education’, June 21, 2015). This agenda, started by the UPA government and being ever more aggressively pursued since the Modi regime took over, threatens to destroy public funded higher education and chain it irrevocably to the interests of for-profit private players, domestic and foreign.

INDIA’S higher education is going through a tumultuous period. A series of hastened ‘reforms’ are putting the very foundations of our public higher education at the brink of collapse. In last November, UGC had sent guidelines forcing all universities to implement the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) from the 2015-16 academic session. It has now been followed by a ‘Make in UGC’ approach of preparing centralised syllabi for undergraduate courses, with universities being given just 20 percent deviation while preparing their own syllabi.

WHITE flags flutter in the air as hundreds of student activists from across the country, holding SFI banners, marched in the national capital on February 26 to ward off the threat of saffronisation of education. “Hum ladenge, Hum jeetenge (We’ll fight, we’ll win),” SFI president V Sivadasan told the historic gathering as he cautioned the BJP-led government against its policy of commercialisation and communalisation of education.

THE School Teachers' Federation of India (STFI) organised a national education convention on November 13 in New Delhi's Constitution Club. The slogans were 'Strengthen and Implement the RTE Act, and Save and Uphold the Public Education'. CPI(M) MP Sitaram Yechury inaugurated the convention and Abhijit Mukherjee, the president of STFI, presided over it. Professor Anil Sadgopal, presidium member of all-India forum for right to education, and Professor Santa Sinha, former chairperson of NCPCR, delivered special address at the convention.